King Nothing
Jaq couldn't remember the last time he'd been so violently sick. Gripped by incredible waves of nausea, his hands trembled and his body shuddered as he doubled over and vomited for all he was worth. He couldn't think past the noise, the relentless pounding in his skull overrode everything else.
He was almost too dizzy to keep to his feet, leaning heavily against the rack to stay balanced as he pitched the last remnants of his stomach onto the floor. On the rack was bound the still-warm body of his last Jedi captive.
Jaq was unaware of just how long he hung there, eyes screwed shut against the pain, waiting for the hammering in his head to stop, or at least abate enough to allow him to see and hear again. When finally he felt like he could stand on his own two feet without falling over, he immediately took stock of the situation.
There was still a nasty taste in the back of his throat as he assessed the condition of his captive. Mentally he slapped himself for killing her. He had a rule - they had a rule - that captives deemed untrainable were to be disposed of in a very specific manner, despite what he always told them; that he could kill them at any time he wished. In reality, killing his captives was a mess of paperwork and an massive amount of trouble.
If nothing else, he'd just broken any number of regulations. Ordinarily, he had little use for regulations, but Master Dessa, the Sith who recruited him into Dark Lady Revanna's holy crusade, would be royally ticked. He was her direct subordinate, and she answered to the Assassin High Command, and from there, to Revanna herself. Dessa and High Command took protocol like this seriously.
Glaring at the body, Jaq entertained the thought that she was reaching from beyond the grave to complicate his life, before this, too, left his mind and was replaced by dispassionate resignation.
He couldn't believe he'd been so sucked into her charade. She was of course lying to him. Jedi never told the truth. Jaq and the others like him were the single most important prong of Revanna's attack on the treacherous Jedi and the corrupt Republic they supported--the Republic that hadn't been there when everyone needed it.
There was simply no way the Dark Lady herself would be killing off the Assassins. It made no logical sense, and if Revanna had proven herself anything, it was that she was ruthlessly logical. She'd used kill squads from the very beginning against the Mandalorians, and he was one of the first recruits. He remembered countless times dropping behind enemy lines with orders to seek out and eliminate enemy officers. He and his squad would collect Mandalorian ears as proof.
Revanna loved looking at her Assassins' ear collections. To her, each one was an enemy who couldn't imperil her strategies; to Jaq, each ear was one less threat he had to keep away. But that was long ago.
No, Jaq deduced, the Jedi had simply been doing her life's calling, the purpose of all Jedi: Lying. Why he'd put so much stock in the crazy things she said to him was confounding. He saw her type often enough anyway; captives willing to say anything to please him. Though he usually made a show of acting as if he somehow derived satisfaction from their piteous supplication, in reality it didn't mean anything to him.
Turning enemies into allies was just his job.
The loud click of a latch being disengaged caught Jaq's attention. Someone was coming for a visit to his favorite dungeon.
Jaq sighed and picked up his datapad to start writing his report and wading through the red tape. A disheveled mop of dirty blond, almost gray, hair stuck around the corner.
"Dess wants you, Jaq." It was Friden, one of the administrator's aides. Short and skinny, as far as anyone knew the kid had no combat skills and would never fly as an interrogator, but he handled figures well, so Dessa kept him around to shuffle papers and crunch numbers.
"In the office or in the bedroom?" Jaq asked dryly, wondering if his terrible attempt at humor would even crack a smile on Friden's face. It didn't. Friden had about the capacity for humor of a boulder. Or Jaq, for that matter.
"No, she wants to discuss some things with you," Friden clarified without missing a beat, not even seeming to catch Jaq's double entendre.
"Fine," Jaq grunted in reply. "I'll be there."
He hated the schutta, hated her with every fiber of his being. That conceited, arrogant, fascist Iridonian schutta who recruited him had taken everything away from him. After killing Mandos for years, Jaq was ready to quit, and would have quit if not for the good servant of the Dark Lady. She made sure there was nothing for him to go back to.
But it didn't matter now. Dess was his boss now, and he couldn't change that.
Swearing, Jaq set the datapad aside and got up, started for the door. He could catalog the corpse anytime; he might as well get Dessa's meeting out of the way.
"My lady Revanna, Malak is requesting to speak with you."
"Patch him through to my private console please," the Dark Lady answered, clicking a carmine red-lacquered fingernail on the smooth metal surface of her armrest as she pondered what was so bothering her most impatient friend.
"Yes, my lady." The ensign bowed and scurried off. No one - not the officers, and especially not the juniors - wanted to be in her presence for long. She had killed officers before; turncoats, traitors, and the like, and gained something of a reputation among her organization. Rumors ran rampant. She let them, as a healthy dose of fear was useful in keeping problematic factions in line.
Fidgeting idly with a strand of her platinum blonde, shoulder-length hair, Revanna swiveled in her chair to face the glowing blue hologram of Malak, famed Jedi Swordsman, her single greatest ally and the slipperiest character she had to manage. He was an interesting set of contradictions, and Revanna found him a fascinating study in intellectual diversity.
"Malak, I can already guess what this must be about, and my answer has not changed from the last four times you asked me," Revanna said, narrowing her violet-speckled blue eyes. "So the next five times you ask me, my answers will still be the same."
"You said this stage would not last," Malak grumbled. He clenched a fist and flourished his superfluous maroon cape dramatically. "Give me the freedom to do as I will, and I promise I will have this war over and done with in less than a year's time. The longer this continues the worse it becomes for all of us. You always choose the difficult way, Revanna. Let me take my initiative. Did my way not always result in fair gains?"
Revanna had but to raise her hand and he instantly shut his impulsive mouth. "Malak, you still have so much to learn about the Force, about war, and about me. I know exactly what I am doing. I have never denied that your methods have valid uses, uses I fully intend to utilize. But this is and has always been my war to run. I will not have you attempting to step on my toes and take control yourself, whether or not you think my ways capable enough. I was the one who turned you from a skeptic into a believer; I made you, Malak. If you insist on pressing me, I may have to end you. Do not forget that."
Suitably chastened, Malak bowed his head and said nothing.
"Things are changing, Malak," she said soothingly to her friend, lest he think her insensitive. "I will give you your turn soon enough, but you must keep Admiral Karath in the wings for now."
"He grows impatient as I do, my lady Revanna," Malak protested. "If we wait much longer, he may not be turned."
"Don't worry your head over this, Malak. I'll see to it," Revanna promised. She switched off the holo feed and paged another messenger.
"Yes, my lady?"
"Bring me the latest assessment reports from Master Dessa and the High Command on Dathomir. I want to see what her Assassins have been up to lately."
"Jaq, so good to see you. You've been quite the busy bee recently," Dessa-Nise Sihonesh, Sith Master of considerable merit and a personal friend of the Dark Lady Revanna herself, greeted him. She was sitting at a table, sipping a tall, frothy drink in a thin, brightly-colored club dress with a dipping neckline that displayed ample cleavage and subtle Zabrak markings all over her tanned skin. Dark auburn hair hung in ringlets and shielded a pair of intelligent brown eyes that watched him. She looked more like a cocktail waitress than the Sith mastermind she really was.
Jaq always thought she looked like a shark exposing its bloody grin to the next victim.
Dessa had chosen a public place to meet and discuss, like she sometimes did to her subordinates the Assassins. Normally, it gave her the advantage with contingencies, but not against him. He knew every cantina within three systems of home base, and certainly every place in the local city, from the most unsightly of the cantinas to the harmless media cafes, like this one. He'd been to near all of them.
They exchanged plastic smiles and Jaq sat down. "Dessa. You know I was just thinking of you. I was going to send flowers for your last visit, but they must have gotten mixed up in the mail."
"Oh, don't get coy with me, Jaq," Dessa said, grinning voluptuously. "We know each other better than that."
"With you that's never a sure thing, Dess," he replied off-handedly. "But don't tell me you called me over here just to tell me it's good to see me."
"Don't be thinking too much of yourself now, Jaq. As delightful as we can be for each other, there are more pressing matters of my concern. I'm here to tell you that High Command has taken notice of you. Some of the Masters want to offer you a move up in the organization. There'd be less dirty work, and much, much more rewards," she breathed lustily, leaning forward so he could look down her dress. "It would be very unwise to refuse them Jaq."
Jaq wasn't affected at all by her promiscuity; it was just another of her tools of control, one he knew well enough to avoid. "I remember almost this exact same speech from before, Dessa," he remarked. "As I recall, that didn't work out so well for me."
"Oh, but you eventually came around, remember?" cooed the slimy schutta, the fake smile still plastered to her face. "And you're right; this really is like last time. Think of how much easier it would have been if you'd just said yes."
That thought was almost too painful for him to contemplate. If he'd said yes, maybe...
Jaq blocked the thoughts from his mind. He knew Dessa anyway, it probably would have made no difference to her if he'd said yes at the first instead of stalling. The possibility didn't change anything for him.
Like every time he laid eyes on her, Jaq wanted to wring the dirty schutta's neck, but felt it would be a waste of energy.
Jaq leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head in faux relaxation. "Well," he said, "if this is like last time, then I guess you know my answer. I don't need to tell you where the Masters can shove it, do I?"
Dessa just smiled that shark smile of hers. "Oh, I'm sure you'll come around, Jaq. You did last time." Gathering up her handbag - a Sith with a handbag, Jaq laughed at the very notion, but then, that was Dess - she stood, crossed over to his side of the table, and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't let me down," she whispered, running her tongue over his ear.
Jaq watched the smarmy Iridonian leave, observing the way she held her bare shoulders, the sway of her hips. She was a person who would be incredibly beautiful if she weren't the ugliest being in the universe.
As he was musing, something subtle interrupted Jaq's thoughts. As she left the cafe, Dessa did the oddest thing with her hand. Curling a finger as if to brush some hair from her eyes, she casually dragged her hand across her temple, making it look natural and innocent, but Jaq's instincts knew better.
She was activating a subcutaneous transmitter. She was sending a signal.
Jaq immediately started covertly scouting his escape routes. As he was doing so, four men entered with the next influx of customers. Dressed in ordinary clothes, no one but another assassin would ever have paid them a second thought. Casual jackets would conceal high-powered weaponry, poison gas, signal scramblers; everything they needed to ensure he was trapped. They began fanning out, again casually, normally, as if they belonged. But Jaq knew the difference between being the pattern and fitting the pattern; one was normal, the other wasn't.
His instincts took over. He slipped quietly from his seat and, as he passed close by another patron, surreptitiously dropped the remains of Dessa's cocktail on the floor. Amid the clamor of the place, the glass shattering was barely heard, but the other patron immediately called for someone to come clean up the mess. Jaq seized the opening and slipped into the back, keeping a close eye on his clandestine shadows.
They hadn't noticed his stealthy evasion. Either they were incredibly stupid or they were newbies. Either way, he didn't care, as long as--
Frack! Jaq cursed to himself. While he was busy congratulating himself, he'd failed to pay attention to the the fourth man, who he'd lost sight of in the bustle.
Jaq watched the assassin approaching the kitchen door, reaching into his jacket for something--a stunner, he realized.
It was then he realized just how much of a sham had been Dessa's 'meeting'. He didn't know what her plans were, but she had no intention of letting him refuse. These men were here to bring him in.
Remembering his last such deal with Dessa, something fired to life inside Jaq. He said no to her at first; why did he change his mind? Especially after what she did, why did he say yes?
For what reason he couldn't imagine, Jaq decided this time it would be different. He hated the schutta, and wouldn't be at her beck and call anymore.
Jaq pulled the fire alarm.
The high-pitched squeal had the desired effect. Absolute chaos erupted in the cafe and suddenly his four shadows were lost amid the sea of people rushing for the exits or just running around madly screaming 'fire!' in several different languages.
He wasted little time. Climbing up on a counter and ripping off the overhead grate, Jaq hoisted himself up into the vent shaft. He climbed quickly, bracing himself against the walls with the tough rubber soles of his GI boots and his back pressed against the opposite side, moving foot by foot until he reached the U-bend up top. With his combat knife, he sliced the thin steel and kicked it out with his foot.
On the roof of the cafe, he watched the crowd dispersing and the emergency vehicles racing to the scene of the false alarm. It took him only a minute to find the first of his shadows among the throng. They were too steady, too deliberate in their movements to fit in with the panicked crowd. Soon he had a bead on all four of them.
They weren't even attempting to conceal their blasters, or the bandoleers of gas grenades over their chests. Jaq wondered just what sort of orders they'd been given, if they had authorization to terminate him if capture was deemed impractical. Either way, evading them would be easy, but he wanted one of them alive.
He needed to know what was going on.
The four shadows had to be rookies, he decided. They were dumb enough not to even cast a casual glance at the rooftops. Jaq reassessed; separating one of them would be almost as easy as evading them altogether.
Moving quickly, he took off his drab brown jacket and pulled out the inner lining, ripping open the purposefully weakened seams, revealing the hidden garrote wire, which he wrapped several times around his hands, checking its tension. He tested it a few times experimentally against an exposed pipe, satisfying himself it was in good order.
He armed his hands with leather pads to protect from lacerating himself, put his jacket back on, and went back to watching his four rookie shadows. They split up into two pairs and moved in opposite directions, ostensibly to cover more ground and reduce the chances of him escaping. In truth, they were making it twice as easy for him.
Slowly, Jaq climbed over the edge and lowered himself onto the top of a dumpster at the side of the building. It was deep night and the alleyway was poorly lit. He became one with the gloom as he wound the wire around his palms, wetting the length left with saliva for good measure.
Like puppets on strings, the two men appeared exactly where he expected them. They were at least scanning the darkness with their weapons, behaving not quite as naively as he'd first thought. But he was still better. There was little chance of them spotting him before it was too late. As they crept closer, flourishing their blasters, Jaq continued to wait. He let their confidence build.
He struck.
Launching himself forward off the dumpster with almost no noise, Jaq had the wire around both their necks in an instant, jerking back savagely. He didn't bother holding them long, instead let them fall to the ground, clutching their throats. With lightning fast reflexes born of years doing just what he was doing, Jaq seized the one man's head and twisted violently, dispatching him in less than three seconds. Before the second man could grab for the blaster that had fallen in front of him, Jaq had the wire around his neck again.
He was surprised when the man got to his feet, driving himself - and Jaq - backward into the building. The breath left his lungs in a great whoosh as he was smashed between the assassin's body and the wall, but instead of relaxing his grip, he tightened it until the wire started to draw blood.
Jaq knew he had to be careful. If he pulled too hard, he would sever the man's windpipe, and he would die. He wanted this man alive. Alive and able to answer questions.
But crushed up against the brick wall with hardly more breath than the man whose back he was riding, Jaq was starting to have trouble thinking clearly. The man's hands were searching wildly, trying to find his eyes. He ignored the warnings of his mind and pulled harder. Finally the man's struggles turned to trying to claw the wire from his neck and Jaq knew he had the upper hand.
With a boot to the wall, he pushed himself forward, sending them both to the ground. Jaq quickly discarded the wire and wrapped his arm around the man's neck, choking him manually. He let him have just barely enough air to keep breathing, slowly but surely crushing consciousness from him.
When the man's struggles were stilled but he could feel the pulse still beating strong, Jaq let go. Reaching into his pocket and producing a heavy set of pliers - where had that come from, he wondered - he quickly cut his garrote wire into two sections, which he used to bind the assassin's feet and hands. Moving the man would be bothersome, and Jaq would prefer not to be seen toting a man easily one hundred pounds heavier than him around the city on his shoulders.
A last-minute reservation in the sewer would have to do.
Jaq looked about for something he could use as a crowbar to open the nearby grate.
He had work to do.
"What do you mean he's missing?" Revanna hissed indignantly. Appearing before her as a hologram, Assassin Master Dessa shrunk visibly. Revanna immediately softened her voice. "I'm sorry, Dessa. How can he be missing? You promised me you had everything under control."
Dessa bowed her head. "Forgive me, Revanna. It was my failing. I have been derelict in my duty to you and the Sith Empire. Please kill me for my failure."
"No, I'll not kill you, Dessa," Revanna growled. "It would serve no purpose. Now get off your knees, we have work to do."
Dessa got to her feet. "What is your command, my lady?" she asked.
Revanna clicked a fingernail on her armrest. "What was your mistake, Dessa? Tell me why Jaq was able to evade you."
The Zabrak gulped. "I attempted to use an event from his past as motivation for his willing cooperation."
"And he failed to be... motivated?" Revanna rolled the word off her tongue experimentally, vaguely curious as to what definition Dessa would put to it.
Dessa was a devout Jedi. Having trained under an esteemed master, she'd always been firmly committed to the mission of the Jedi, but was immensely unpopular among many Jedi for the ways she chose to further that mission. Revanna liked her because she got things done, always had. But to say that her methods were strange would not begin to cover it.
That was the reason Revanna had put Dessa along with the others in charge of her kill squads, those deadly weapons of terror that gutted entire Mandalorian platoons with just a few dozen hits. Dessa had a great sense of how to hit critical points, and knew just where to apply pressure on a given situation to cause a collapse.
This failure had to be a first for Dessa.
"Jaq is a simple man," Dessa said. "Simpler than one would think, especially given his... attributes. Turning him was straightforward. It took some pushing, but it was no great feat." She frowned. "I would have expected a simple reminder of Sith control should have convinced him. I think he still remembers too well what happened to him before we came into his life; it should have been enough to flip him."
"Surely you had contingencies in place?"
"Of course, my lady. But with so many of the Assassins now gone..." Dessa trailed off.
Revanna understood, and regretted, if just for a second. It was a shame to be doing away with what had been her most consistent and faithful weapon, even if it was to forge a new line of vanguards, soldiers in the war against oblivion. Her Assassins were nearing the end of their lifetime, and with so few remaining, they were having to rely more and more on amateurs to clean up what was left of them.
Jaq was no amateur. He could evade any cheap trap.
Revanna snapped her fingers. "I do not begrudge you your failure this time, Dessa." Relief washed over the Iridonian's burnished ivory features. Revanna held up a finger. "But failure the second time will be a great disappointment to me."
"Yes, my lady," Dessa quickly responded, bowing again. When her head raised, she had an expression of cautious puzzlement on her face. "If I may ask, why do you need him, this Jaq, so insistently."
"He is the best of the best," Revanna replied. "If the Force is to survive the coming forks in prophecy, I cannot afford to have inferior allies, or ones of limited loyalty. One and all, all or none; this is the way the war for the future will be fought.
"Now find your errant disciple, Dessa, or I just may kill you."
Jaq had a queasy feeling in his stomach as he he thought about all the security swarming over the temple grounds. It wasn't that they were particularly hard to avoid, but the fact that they were present at all. He found himself giving unprecedented thought to the things the last Jedi had said to him. They were starting again to tickle at his brain and make disturbing sense.
His captured shadow friend had cracked like an eggshell, but unfortunately he knew very little. All Jaq was able to get from him was that there were orders out to bring him in by any means necessary. He didn't know whose orders they were, but assumed Dessa was involved somehow.
The fact that he was being pursued by rookies also gave him pause. Revanna and Assassin High Command had command of the best operatives in the galaxy. If they wanted to bring him in, they should simply assign one of the other Assassins to do the job.
Unless, of course, there were no Assassins left. That thought gave Jaq chills. Maybe the Jedi had been right, had been telling him the truth. It would certainly explain his strange evening. If Revanna was indeed using the Assassins as a platform to create mindless super-soldiers with Force powers far exceeding even the most powerful Sith of their time, this was exactly the way it would be happening.
Jaq shoved these thoughts into the back of his mind as he concentrated on what he had to do. If Dessa was involved - and there was no doubt she was - than he knew where to get answers.
Utilizing years of training and hard experience, he slipped past the tight net of armed guards and Sith operatives combing the temple for him. He was used to evading surveillance and search teams, but before he'd always had a reason, something worthwhile to justify the danger he put himself through, something that meant enough to him that he'd keep going back to do it. Now he had only his life to keep him going, and for the first time it seemed to be enough.
Silently as a shadow, he crept into Dessa's office. She wasn't there, of course; she was never in her office. It was little more than a display, a show put on for formality's sake. If it was business-related, Dessa always took her time in the mess, or in the barracks. If it was personal, well, Jaq had been there too, a number of times.
Almost all the time, Dessa left the actual workings of her office to Friden, her administrator and secretary. And sure enough, the spindly kid who couldn't weigh more than a hundred and twenty pounds was still at the desk. Jaq started to pull out his wire, but hesitated. Maybe Friden would cooperate.
He stepped into plain view. "Friden."
The kid's jaw dropped. "Jaq--I, I didn't expect you back so soon. Um, what can I do for you? Dess is away on business right now."
Jaq's hopes faded. He could see it in Friden's eyes that he'd not expected to see him again--ever. Friden knew everything.
Jaq lunged forward, looking to put the kid down quickly. Friden surprised him by seizing his forward-plunging arm and stepping around him, yanking the arm behind his back painfully, almost enough to pull his shoulder out. Jaq grunted in pain and whipped his head back, crushing the back of his skull squarely against Friden's nose. Friden let go.
Before Jaq could take advantage, Friden launched a disproportionately powerful kick with his left leg, hitting Jaq just enough to the side of his groin so the explosion of pain wasn't quite enough to make him black out.
Almost paralyzed with pain, Jaq stubbornly kept to his feet, only for Friden to come at him with a knife. He quickly threw his hands up to deflect a strike away from his face. The knife sliced his arm to the bone. Friden tripped him up with a swipe of his stick-like leg and Jaq was suddenly on the ground. He just barely managed to turn aside another plunging blow of the knife, and seized Friden's hand, trying to get if from him.
Friden poked him in the eye with a free hand and suddenly Jaq was seeing double. He tenaciously clung to Friden's knife hand, twisting his body for more leverage. The little monkey-sized man seemed to be everywhere, and Jaq couldn't connect with a counter-punch of his own.
Finally, he took a final turn, brought his legs up underneath the thrashing man on top of him, and kicked as hard as he could. Friden was catapulted across the room and hit the wall with a smack. The knife fell between the two of them.
Jaq lunged for it, but Friden kicked him in the head, causing him to black out for a split-second. The next thing he saw was the knife coming for him again.
Disregarding the knife, Jaq suicidally charged Friden. He felt the blade go in him somewhere, and a fraction of a second later, his body smashed into Friden's smaller frame. With as much force as he could muster, he rammed Friden into the desk. Not wasting a moment, he grabbed the lanky kid by the neck and threw him over the desk, knocking papers, datapads, lamps, and other office paraphernalia in every direction.
He leaped up onto the desk and began stomping on every thrashing body part that came near him, only for Friden to grab him by the leg and send him crashing into the chair and the wall. Jaq grunted as the chair collapsed in fragments under him. He whipped his head around and socked Friden squarely in the face with a fist nearly as large as the man's head.
Staggering back, Jaq finally found the knife. It was stuck in between two of his lowest ribs, a shallow wound that nonetheless went clean through one side of his torso and out the other. He yanked it out.
Friden caught him by surprise, bowling into him from the side and knocking his head painfully off the desk, sending the knife flying. Jaq struggled back to his feet and blocked the next blow, grabbing Friden's arm in both hands. Stepping around him, he levered the smaller man into the wall, and with a knee pressed into the small of his back, pulled as hard as he could.
Friden finally screamed as his arm clean broke. The fight went out of him and he collapsed to the floor.
Jaq retrieved the knife and held it to Friden's throat. "You and I are going for a walk."
Despite the knife, Friden attempted to struggle into action again and Jaq took no chances, slamming the knife handle hard against the back of Friden's skull.
Grabbing a fistful of Friden's dirty blond hair, Jaq slapped him hard in the face to rouse him. The lanky kid was hung upside down in the small cargo area of his personal transport craft docked in one of the temple's sublevels. The bodies of the two guards posted to watch his ship kept Friden company, their blood-covered corpses hanging to either side of the skinny little administrator.
Friden's eyes opened wide.
"Don't bother screaming," Jaq told him. "The ship's soundproof--one of the quirks of having to transport unwilling guests and get places under tight surveillance. Nobody will hear you."
He'd secured the kid's feet on one of several parallel racks running along the ceiling and tied his hands behind his back with a double-thickness of heavy rope, another line connected his bound hands to his feet, keeping him completely incapable of any movement other than impotent thrashings.
To his surprise, Friden cracked a smile. A vile, sick smile. "You are going to die, Jaq. And even if you don't, you could end up like me. Did you know there's only about a one in twenty chance you'll retain your sense of identity? I hear most simply forfeit everything but their orders. No more renegade, disobeying direct orders, working your own agenda--"
Jaq seized Friden's arm at the point of the fracture, yanked him by it, twisting him around until he was screaming again.
"I expected you to have a higher breaking point, Friden, especially after those stunts back in the office. You feel like telling me what that was all about?"
Friden coughed up some blood when Jaq released him. "Dessa really wants you back, Jaq. You embarrassed her to Revanna. Not a nice thing to do to your--"
Jaq jerked on his broken limb again. "Why! What does she want with me?"
Friden mumbled through tears of pain, trying to answer. "Just let go? Please, it hurts too much."
"Tell me what I want to know or this is only the beginning of how much I am going to hurt you!" Jaq snarled, not in the mood for any games.
"Okay, I'll tell you! Please, stop it!"
"Start talking, then I'll think about letting go."
"Assassin High Command is shutting us down, Jaq!" Friden managed in a scream, unable to stand the pain. Jaq let go of the kid's arm, surprised. "Dessa, she has orders to turn in all her best operatives, including you, including me--AUGH, STOP!"
"Turn them in to whom?" Jaq asked, twisting Friden's arm harder.
"Dark Lady!" Friden gasped.
Stunned, Jaq took a step back.
Revanna. Then everything was true. The Jedi had told him the truth. He was going to die.
"Why?" he asked.
Friden had descended into uncontrolled weeping. "I don't know!" he sobbed. "I don't know why, but I was one of the first. I used to be a soldier, you know, but after what they did to me, there was so little of me left that I couldn't go back to the frontlines. They said it was because I wasn't sensitive to the Force. They made me like this."
"What are they doing to people, Friden? Tell me!"
"I don't know, I swear!"
Jaq let him go. "Alright, what do they need Force-sensitives for, then?"
"I'm not sure, Jaq, but Dessa keeps saying that Revanna needs to cultivate loyal soldiers. I don't know what that means, but everyone she sends to the Dark Lady comes back different. Sometimes they can't even speak anymore, or do anything unless she tells them to. A lot of them never come back."
The picture was starting to coalesce in Jaq's mind. The Assassins were being decommissioned, either killed off or abducted for some new initiative of High Command's. Jaq recognized how the process worked, as the current incarnation of Revanna's kill squads had once been a 'new initiative', one he'd tried to resign from.
Dessa had been trying to recruit him willingly, just like she had those few years ago. When he refused her, she moved to her contingency plan; which in this case was bring him in with any force necessary.
He couldn't believe the Jedi had been so right. Revanna was killing off her own, or if not killing them, turning them into... something else. If the trembling kid hanging by his feet in front of him had once been a soldier, someone of stature and ability, he couldn't imagine what she was doing to those people his compatriots.
Men losing their minds, their self-will, or simply dying altogether; all to 'cultivate loyal soldiers', as Friden put it. A chill ran down his spine.
He turned back to Friden. There was murder in his eyes. "You knew about all this."
"No, please, Jaq, you see what they did to me! Revanna can do anything! Be reasonable, I had no choice!"
"Reasonable," Jaq said flatly. The word tasted poisonous coming off his tongue. He grasped Friden by the hair again, jerked his head up so the kid's eyes looked directly into his. "You try destroying a man's home, killing his family and everything he ever cared about, and then expecting him to be 'reasonable'!" he snarled. "That's what Dessa does to people; that's what she did to me! I'm a Sith, Friden, open your eyes! I'm not reasonable!"
Friden started babbling again. Jaq clubbed him in the head with the knife again, shutting him up.
As he sat and thought about what he should do next, only two real options presented themselves to him: He could stay and die, either from Revanna's experiments or suicide right here on the spot. Or he could die running, trying to always elude Revanna's relentless arm of control until she finally caught him.
Memories of what he'd already lost suddenly flooded through him, inundating him with the paralyzing agony of guilt and grief over what he might have changed. He remembered a time when he'd been happy, when every time he went into battle he had motivation to survive and return home at the end of the war; a time when his life meant something. Now, all he had was an empty routine, the drudging mockery of a life, devoid of purpose or substance. Everything bright had been taken out of him.
Vengeance, retribution, justice were all foreign concepts to him. His apathy was so strong he'd even slept with the very butcher of his family.
Yet there was one force powerful enough to shake him free: Fear. Face with the end of his life, Jaq realized he desperately did not want to die. He didn't want to die an ignominious death as part of a lab experiment, nor the slow, poisonous death he brought on himself every day since joining the Sith.
As long as he lived, there was still a chance, however unlikely, that he could find something worthwhile for his life. Maybe he'd even find some kind of happiness again.
But death was final, absolute.
It was also what would save him.
Slowly, Jaq walked to the cockpit and retrieved a small box from under the pilot's chair. A salty droplet fell onto his hand as he opened it and took out the pictures he used to carry with him into every battle. With a shaking hand, he held them into the light.
A beautiful wife and two children, a boy and a girl, five and seven years old. He loved them all to death.
Now it was time to forget them, time to move on, time to start over.
It was time for Jaq to die.
The instant Dessa's hologram appeared, on her knees, her head bowed, Revanna knew she'd failed again. It was a shame, Dessa had once been a friend.
"Answer to me, Dessa," the Dark Lady commanded of her servant.
"My lady Revanna, Jaq is dead."
Revanna drew little circles on her armrest a fingernail. Something was off. "Dead, you say?"
Dessa nodded. "He came back to the temple, looking for his ship. We were unable to trap him inside, he killed the guards we'd posted and hid his tracks well. But he couldn't evade our aerial defenses; his ship was shot into pieces before he could get clear. There is little left but a charred body."
Indeed this was a shame.
"Dessa, what did you do to the man?" Revanna asked.
The Sith Master blinked in confusion. "Revanna?"
"What did you do to the man?" the Dark Lady repeated.
"Why, I simply--"
"I have never asked how you recruited him, I left that completely up to your discretion. Same with all our former operatives. I am asking now how it is that you convinced him not to return to his family and home and go on to fight another war."
Dessa paled. "Well, my lady, as you have always said, victory must be achieved at any cost."
Revanna's anger flared. Furious, she reached out with the Force and locked her grip around Dessa's throat, lifting her into the air. "What did you to him? I will not ask again, Dessa!"
"He refused!" Dessa coughed past Revanna's choke-hold, struggling. She clawed useless at her neck, unable to relieve the pressure. "He wouldn't listen to reason, he was a deserter of the cause! I did what I had to; remove his motivation to desert!"
Revanna dropped her old friend. On her hands and knees, Dessa gasped air greedily.
"You... killed, his family," Revanna said flatly.
"It was the only way, my lady," Dessa protested, all but groveling on the floor, appealing for Revanna's mercy. "He was the best of the best. You would have done the same thing if you had to!"
"Dessa, you fool!" she snapped. "He is not dead. Jaq escaped."
Dessa shook her head desperately. "That is--not possible."
"He escaped," the Dark Lady repeated. "You said it yourself; he is the best of the best. He's the best there is and you just gave him a reason to keep on living: To forget what you did to him and his family."
"My lady, please," Dessa begged. "Allow me to dispatch the hunter-killers. I swear I will bring him back to you."
"No," Revanna pronounced. "I do not forgive this failure." Her tone was harsh, flat, devoid of any empathy, pity, or mercy. She no longer felt anything for the piteous Sith prostrate before her. Dessa had earned her death.
"If I find you still alive by the time I reach Dathomir I will personally drain you of your life and power and give it to another to use, one who is better than you and who will not fail me as you have. And then, Dessa, then I will behead you. If you wish otherwise, then I would suggest you put that lightsabre of yours to good use and cut your heart out yourself. The choice is yours."
Angrily, Revanna shut off the transmission, leaving Dessa to decide her fate on her own. She called for another messenger.
"Send word to Lord Malak: He may begin."
He was dead tired, starved, hardly even sure of his own name when he staggered into the cantina. He vaguely remembered the place, and part of his mind warned him not stay, to turn back and find a different, less familiar place where people were less likely to recognize him, but after three days straight running in a stolen ship on only a few collective hours of sleep, somewhat resembling an emaciated gizka on crutches, he almost didn't care of if someone with connections to Assassin High Command turned him in.
He all but collapsed at the bar, shoving a few credit chips on the counter at the barkeep, who eyed him suspiciously.
"I know you?" the man asked him.
"No," he mumbled, trying to keep his head upright on his shoulders.
"Fine. What's the name, if I ask?"
"Atton Rand."
"Indeed. And what can I get for you, Atton Rand?"
"Juma by the bottle, please." He slapped some more chips on the counter. "And keep it coming."
The barkeep grunted and was off to get him his drinks.
Jaq nibbled on a few protein crackers as he waited for his bottle, running the name Atton Rand over and over in his head until the syllables blended together into a meaningless mush. Atton was his name now. Jaq was dead. He'd died a long time ago, trying to defend the family he loved more than his life.
Atton was a common enough name out on the Rim, which was where he figured he was going. He didn't really know what he was going to do, except that before he did it, he intended to forget everything he possibly could; about his family, about the Sith, about the man he'd been, about everything.
He'd forget, and then it would be time for a new beginning.